Everything needed was written down; and the promises to the apostles imply this; and the Rule of Faith in the early church also shows this

In order to understand all of this post, it is important to read the two links at Apologetics and Agape,


1.  The Defining Question on Sola Scriptura and Tradition
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/the-defining-question/

2.  The Rule of Faith in the Early Church
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/the-rule-of-faith-in-the-early-church/


 and also view and listen to the debate on Sola Scriptura between Dr. James White and Mitch Pacwa.

In response to my article on Rod Bennett's recent appearance on Marcus Grodi's The Coming Home Network,
a Roman Catholic who goes by Arvinger, wrote:  (see more details leading up to this in the combox)

I think you have missed my point, Ken - I did not argue that the doctrine of Trinity is not explicitly taught in Scripture and we rely on authority of the Council, I agree with you that it is based on sound exegesis of Scripture. Scripture explicitly teaches deity of the Father, deity of the Son and deity of the Spirit, there is no question about it. However, specific Christological teachings like two wills of Christ, condemnation of monoenergism and condemnation of monotheletism byt Third Constantinople are not provable from Scripture alone (especially in the case of monoenergism, which, as I said, was deliberately vaguely defined to provide a compromise between Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians), thus these teachings are relying on authority of the Council.

This (above) was his response to my first response (below in blue) about the implication of Scripture passages that imply everything we need will be written down:

I wrote:

In the debate linked to below, from around the 1 hour mark to 1 hour and 8 minutes, Dr. White's questions to Mitch Pacwa answer your first objection. 
When I have time I will flesh it out more. the fact that the RCC has never dogmatically declared any words of the apostles that are not in Scripture shows that all that we needed was written down. (which Pacwa admitted was true - that there are no apostolic oral traditions that have been dogmatically defined as words of the apostles) 
What Pacwa is trying to say is that centuries later interpretations are "traditions" that are developed as new issues and questions are raised, and he tries to carefully parallel those RC doctrines and dogmas with the doctrine of the Trinity. But Pacwa admitted that the doctrine of the Trinity is based on sound exegesis of Scripture. 

My main point was to point Avinger to the debate between Dr. White and Mitch Pacwa and the question that Dr. White posed to Mitch Pacwa, and Pacwa's answer that he admitted that the RCC has not infallibly defined any extra-biblical statement as coming from the apostles, which is not already written down in Scripture.  Arvinger mostly went to the last part of my response, about the development of doctrine and the doctrine of the Trinity.  

I have decided to embed the debate between Dr. White and Mitch Pacwa again here.  




My response to Arvinger's second response, which is now edited and expanded upon.  See the combox for my original answer.

I confess I don't know much about "mono-energism" - I need to study that. 

But I know about Mono-theletism (the heresy that Jesus has only one will). That seems easy, along with the 2 persons of Christ, that He had two wills, because He surrendered and submitted His human will in the Garden when He prayed, "Not My will, but Thy will be done" (Luke 22:42) That is clear enough in Scripture, in my opinion. 

Monotheletism was an attempt to win the Monophysites to the Chalcedonian Creed of 451 AD.

I think that the Byzantine Emperors Justinian (527-565 AD) and Heraclius (Emperor 610 to 641 AD) (and probably others between them) were too harsh against the Copts, Monophysites, Jacobite-Syrians and Armenians, (those groups that disagreed with the Chalcedonian Creed of 451 AD), and that created a bitterness among those groups with the unfortunate result that they at first welcomed the Arab Muslims when they invaded the Byzantine Empire and fought the Chalcedonian Creed Byzantine troops quartered there, but the people were mostly Monophysite. when Islam conquered in 636 AD onward.

That is one of the big mistakes of the early church - the complete unity between religion and politics and military might.

My main point was about those verses that seem to imply that everything the church needs for ministry will be written down.  See the first article linked below for the Scripture passages.  

As to your very first point that you make about the issue of questioning that everything we need for ministry, doctrine, etc. was written down, and those verses I supplied seem to imply that. That point is strengthened when we understand the promise to the disciples in John 14 and 16 - "the Spirit will lead you into all the truth" and "the Spirit will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you", etc. 

Notice the promise is to the disciples/ apostles.  This is not a general promise of guidance for the church for the rest of history, although that is certainly an application of the promise, but the specific promise here is to give the disciples/apostles the rest of revelation ("all the truth", "all things", John 16:12 - "I have many more things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now", etc.).  This promise was extended to the apostle Paul later, and would include the other writers of NT books who were writing under apostolic authority.  Mark writing for Peter; Luke interviewing the other apostles and Mary and other eyewitnesses, and under apostolic authority as the fellow-missionary on Paul's team; James and Jude as half-brothers of Jesus, and James is specifically called an apostle in Galatians 1:19 and 1 Corinthians 15:7, and who saw Jesus in His resurrection body.  The book of Hebrews, though Luke and Silas and Apollos have also been suggested, seems to have been written by Barnabas, who is also called an apostle in Acts 14:4 and 14:14.   Tertullian thought Barnabas wrote Hebrews.  (On Modesty, 20)   The other NT books were all written by apostles themselves, John, Matthew, Peter, and Paul.  

These 2 articles linked to below, at my other blog, "Apologetics and Agape", flesh that out more, as we see that the RCC has never infallibly defined any words as coming from the apostles that is not already in Scripture (Dr. White's question to Mitch Pacwa in the debate on Sola Scriptura, see in first link), and the rule of faith that functioned in the early church was a doctrinal statement, organized around the 3 persons of the Trinity, per Matthew 28:19, and whenever it is fleshed out and explicated in the early church (see in second article) it is always a doctrinal creed in content that is all Biblical truth. There is nothing in these lists of "the rule of faith" or "the tradition of the apostles" that is a particular doctrine or seed of a later Roman Catholic particular doctrine that Protestantism disagrees with. The context, especially in Irenaeus and Tertullian is against Gnosticism, which Protestantism also agrees that Gnosticism is heresy and wrong.  The context of Athanasius is mostly against Arians (in his other writings, and where he writes, "Scripture is fully sufficient" (Against the Gentiles 1:3; and de Synodis 6), etc. see in this previous article)  and the Tropici (who denied the Deity of the Holy Spirit), which Protestantism agrees with the early fathers that these were heresies and unBiblical. These early fathers and writers may have mentioned other things in other contexts (like the "Mary as the New Eve" statements), but those peculiar pious beliefs are not part of the rule of the faith, when it is explicated. 

Things like Ignatius and the Didache and others using the word Eucharist, or the word "cath- holic" are not bad in themselves in their original context.  The problem is that Roman Catholicism takes centuries later meanings of these terms and reads them back into the first or second century usage of them.   

The Defining Question on Sola Scriptura and Tradition
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/the-defining-question/

The Rule of Faith in the Early Church
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/the-rule-of-faith-in-the-early-church/

Addendum:
Also, Irenaeus' wrote that it was the Gnostics who pointed to a living voice and living oral tradition outside of Scripture, and this is what Roman Catholics attempt to do by pointing back to 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and John 20:30 and 21:25 - and then reading centuries later doctrines, practices, or "seeds" of those concepts back into those verses - this is what the Gnostics were doing in Irenaeus' day, in order to try and establish an authority from the apostles outside of written Scripture.  See Against Heresies 1:8:1

Such, then, is their [Gnostics] system, which neither the prophets announced, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles delivered, but of which they boast that beyond all others they have a perfect knowledge. They gather their views from other sources than the Scriptures . . . 

and 3:2:1.  

When, however, they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, nor of authority, and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For [they allege] that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but vivâ voce ("living voice") . . .   

This is exactly what Roman Catholics do all the time when attacking Sola Scriptura.

Against Rome's Apostolic Succession Argument by Bullinger (Part 1)

Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) was a Swiss Reformer and author of a popular writing entitled The Decades. This particular writing was influential in England, highly esteemed and used as a textbook of sorts for training English clergy. Included in The Decades is a section entitled Of The Holy Catholic Church, and included therein is Bullinger's refutation of Rome's apostolic succession argument (that Rome is the true church because of an historical succession of church authority that began with Peter). Here is the first part of Bullinger's argument:

Second, the succession of doctors or pastors of the Church does not prove anything of itself without the Word of God. The champions and defenders of the papistical church boast that they have a most certain mark of the apostolic Church, that is, in the continual succession of bishops which derives from Peter by Clement the First, and so to Clement the Seventh, and to Paul the Third who died recently, and so continuing to Julius the Third, who has only just been created pope. Moreover they add that all those members are cut off which separate themselves from that church in which alone that apostolic succession is found. And we do not deny that the right succession of pastors was of great weight in the primitive Church. For those who were then called pastors were pastors indeed, and executed the office of pastors. But what kind of pastors those have been for some time who out of the rabble of cardinals, mitred bishops and sophisters have been called pastors of the church of Rome, only those are ignorant who are altogether without understanding. The prophet Zechariah heard these words spoken to him by the Lord: "Take to thee yet the instruments of a foolish shepherd; for lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not look for the thing that is lost, nor seek the tender lambs, nor heal that that is hurt, nor.feed that that standeth up: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their hoofs in pieces. Woe be to the idol shepherd that forsaketh the flock," etc. Therefore by their continual succession of bishops who do not teach the Word of God sincerely or execute the office and duty of pastors, these men do not prove any more than if they were to set before the eyes of the world a company, of idols. For who dare deny that many, indeed the majority of bishops of Rome since Gregory the Great were idols and wolves and devourers like those described by the prophet Zechariah? I ask then, what can the continual succession,cf such false pastors prove? indeed, did not the later ones fill almost the whole Church with the traditions of men, and partly oppress the Church of God, and partly persecute it? In the ancient church of the Israelites there was a continual order of succession of bishops, without any interruption from Aaron to Urias, who lived under Ahaz, and to other wicked high priests who also fell away from the Word of God: to the traditions of men, and indeed to idolatry. But for all that, that succession did not prove the idolatrous high-priests, with the church which adhered to them, to be the true high-priests of God and the true Church of God. For the true prophets of God, the sound and catholic fathers, who preached the Word of God alone apart from and indeed clean against all the traditions of men, were not able to reckon up any succession of priests to whom they themselves succeeded. Yet in spite of that, they were most excellent lights, and worthy members of the Church of God, and those who believed their doctrine were neither schismatics nor heretics, but even to this day are acknowledged to be the true Church of Christ. When Christ our Lord, the blessed Son of God, taught here on earth and gathered together his Church, the succession of high_priests ranged itself with his adversaries: but that did not mean that they were the rulers of the true Church of God, and Christ of the heretical church. The apostles of our Lord could not allege for themselves and their doctrine an unbroken succession of high-priests: for they were ordained by the Lord, who was also himself created of God the High Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek, outside the succession of the order of Levi. Yet the Church which was gathered by them is acknowledged by all to be the true and holy Church. The apostles themselves would not allow any to be counted their true followers and successors but those who walked uprightly in the doctrine and way of Christ: for the saying of Paul is notable. and manifest: "Be ye followers of me, even as I am of Christ." And though he speaks these words to all the faithful, and not only to the ministers of God's Word, yet he would have the latter his followers like all other Christians, that is to say, every man in his vocation and calling. The same apostle, speaking at Miletum to the bishops of Asia, says amongst other things: "I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Moreover, of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things, to draw disciples after them." It is from the apostolic Church itself, indeed from the company or assembly of apostolic bishops and pastors, that Paul the apostle fetches out the wolves and devourers of the Church. But do you not think that these could have alleged the apostolic succession for themselves and their most corrupt cause, that is, that, they were descended from apostolic pastors? But since forsaking the truth they have fallen from the faith and doctrine of the apostles, their derivation and apostolic succession does not in any way help them. Therefore we conclude that of itself the continual succession of bishops does not prove anything, but on the contrary that succession which lacks the purity of evangelical and apostolic doctrine is not valid.

Source: Library of Christian Classics Vol. XXIV: Zwingli and Bullinger (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953), pp. 309-311

Vatican II vs Trent on “Holy Orders”

Pastor David King has frequently cited Edward J. Kilmartin, S.J. (“The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology,” Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, © 1998, 2004 by the Order of St. Benedict. Edited by Robert J. Daily, S.J.) regarding the views of Pope Gelasius on the Eucharist. These are decidedly not the views of the Council of Trent.

I’ve recently picked up this fascinating work. I’m reading through it, and on another topic I’ve found another statement that I thought I’d pass along:

In Trent’s Decree on Holy Orders, Canon 6 states that there is in the Church “a hierarchy instituted by divine ordination, which consists of bishops, presbyters and ministers.” While this teaching conforms to the idea of existence of such offices from the beginning of the Church, it does not harmonize with the historical facts. The Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium [28] offers a more realistic view based on a more secure historical consciousness and exegesis of Scripture. Here we read “Thus the divinely instituted ecclesiastical ministry is exercised in different degrees by those who even from ancient times (ab antiquo) have been called bishops, priests, and deacons.” Hence in no way does Vatican II affirm that the priesthood was instituted at the Last Supper in the sense understood by Trent (pg 378).

Interesting that, as I’ve suggested that Rome is “recalibrating” its understanding of the papacy, it is also “recalibrating” its understanding of succession.

[The astute Roman Catholic apologist here will chime in and say, “oh yeah, well, it doesn't deny it.” See below on the use of fuzzy language.]

That statement by Kilmartin aligns with something else I’ve posted recently:

“Elders in Every City”
Roger Beckwith, who is an Anglican, in his work, “Elders in Every City: The Origin and Role of the Ordained Ministry” (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press ©2003), noted the use of fuzzy language in the preface to the Ordinal in the Book of Common Prayer to describe the existence of “Bishops, Priests, and Deacons” in the church:

“It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and the ancient Authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church” Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.”

Of this statement, Beckwith says:

This is a very carefully phrased statement which, through loose interpretation, has been misrepresented both by its defenders and by its critics.

For, in the first place, it does not say that this is evident to those “diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient Authors’; in other words, it is evident from Scripture and the Fathers taken together, but not necessarily from one of the two taken singly. If we have difficulty finding the threefold ministry in the New Testament taken by itself, the preface does not say that we should be able to find it there.

In the second place, the preface does not say that “by the Apostles’ decision there have been those Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church” but from the Apostles time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church”; in other words, from the period before the last of the apostles died there have been three orders of ordained ministers; and the last of the apostles, St John, is stated by Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3:3;4) to have lived until the reign of Trajan, who did not become emperor till AD 98. Since the threefold ministry was [evident] when Ignatius of Antioch was writing his letters, about AD 110, it can hardly have arisen later than the beginning Trajan’s reign, in other words, later than the end of the apostolic age. So the preface to the Ordinal is stating the simple truth in saying that it dates from the apostle’s time. But how far the apostles were responsible for the development which took place is left an open question (Beckwith pgs. 9-10)

Roman Catholics and Anglicans both have a reason for pushing the “development” of the notions of “holy orders” for “priests” and of “apostolic succession” for “bishops” back as far into history as they can. And in doctrinal statements, both seem to agree, while some of these ideas were present around 100 AD (and though Ignatius spoke of “bishops”, it is clear that he attributed nothing approaching the kind of authority that the Apostles had!), it is clear that (a) neither of these certainly were instituted by Christ, and (b) neither of these existed in New Testament times.

Robert Reymond summarizes:

It is enough to say in response that episcopacy receives no support whatever from the New Testament. Whether it has been beneficial or not to the church is highly debatable, depending upon one’s view of its development in church history since Cyprian (c. 250), whose views of episcopacy gave rise eventually in the early medieval period to the papacy and to the papacy’s many subsequent doctrinal heresies and political and social abuses of power. As for the claim by the Roman Catholic Church and the other Episcopal church bodies that their authority has come to them through an unbroken line of succession from the apostles themselves down to the present, it is enough to say, first, that such a claim is simply unsupported by history and not verifiable, and second, that even were such an unbroken succession true in some instance, such Episcopal succession per se would convey no particular authority or guarantee apostolicity to the one so graced. Mere unbroken apostolic succession is not the New Testament criterion for ministerial authority (“A New Systematic Theology of the New Christian Faith,” Nashville TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., ©1998, pgs 905-906).

Kilmartin is a fascinating read, by the way. I was surprised to learn that it was Ambrose of Milan (d. 397) whose “metabolic understanding of the change of the nature of the Eucharistic elements” was “a new concept” [late 4th century!] which led to the medieval doctrine of Transubstantiation (pg. 22, and at least some of this work seems to be available through Google Books). So, again, while the early church was faithful to practice what the Lord had commanded, the uniquely Roman spin on what essentially had been a good thing, was changed by Roman [western] novelty.

The Character of God

With respect to “Apostolic Succession,” one Roman Catholic provided this chain of events:

God the Father passed His authority on to Jesus (cf. Matthew 28:18), Who passed it on to the apostles (cf. Luke 10:16 and Matthew 28:19), who passed it on to their successors.

Before we begin to believe assertions like that one, we need to begin at the beginning, and work to understand “what we’ve known (as humans) and when we’ve known it.”

John Frame, in his two works, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing ©2002) and The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing ©1987), is very helpful in understanding both “God the Father” and “His authority” from a biblical perspective.

Knowing God
There is a very pious-sounding thread that runs through Christian theology known as apophatic theology, which, in simple terms, may be defined:

(from Greek ἀπόφασις from ἀπόφημι - apophēmi, "to deny")—also known as Negative theology or Via Negativa (Latin for "Negative Way")—is a theology that attempts to describe God, the Divine Good, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God.

Further, “In Orthodox theology, apophatic theology is taught as superior to cataphatic [positive] theology. While Aquinas felt positive and negative theology should be seen as dialetical correctives to each other [that is, “logically reasoned through the exchange of opposing ideas”], like thesis and antithesis producing a synthesis, Lossky argues, based on his reading of Dionysius and Maximus Confessor, that positive theology is always inferior to negative theology, a step along the way to the superior knowledge attained by negation. This is expressed in the idea that mysticism is the expression of dogmatic theology par excellence.”

There’s that faker, Pseudo-Dionysius, informing leading Orthodox theologians of what’s the right way to understand things.

Frame puts this into perspective. He says, “Scripture does teach that God is incomprehensible in a sense…. But it never denies God’s knowability. Scripture never suggests that the human mind is incapable of knowing God or that human language is incapable of speaking truly about him. Nor does it distinguish one aspect of God (his inner essence) from other aspects (his attributes and acts) and deny us knowledge of the former. Indeed, the covenant presence of God implies we cannot escape knowing him, for we cannot know anything else apart from him” (Doctrine of God, 110).

Scripture teaches that God has made himself known to man. This revelation is universal and clear. As we have seen, man’s ignorance of God is a culpable ignorance. As Paul says,

what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:19-20)

And, beyond this revelation through nature, God has revealed himself through prophets, apostles, and biblical writers, creating a definitive written revelation, the covenant constitution of the people of God….(Doctrine of God, 200).

Frame here begins a section discussing what is “knowable and known” about God, and yet is “mysterious, wondrous, and incomprehensible.”

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. (Deut 29:29)

He concludes from this and other passages that “the biblical writers never see the incomprehensibility of God as detracting from the reliability or authority of his revelation. The mysteriousness of God is never the basis of a general agnosticism. God’s revelation is mysterious, but it is a genuine revelation.”

My approach rejects the broad assertions of agnosticism that are often found in theological works.\... We should not press the way of remotion (via negativa), as did pseudo-Dionysius and John Scotus Erigena (but not Aquinas), to say that we can know only what God is not, not what he is. Negative statements by themselves are useless: for example, one can know a thousand things what a Siberian husky is not, without having any useful knowledge of what he is.

Nor should we accept the claims of more recent thinkers who have described God as “wholly hidden” or “wholly other.” This kind of general agnosticism is foreign to Scripture. The Lord of Scripture is not wholly hidden. He is knowable and known to all through nature, and his revelation in Scripture is perfectly adequate to its purpose. (Doctrine of God, 205-6).

The Authority of God
This is where God’s authority comes in. We can know God’s authority, and as Frame immediately follows, “As we have seen, Scripture tells us that God is the ultimate controller, and that we are his possession, not the other way around. The more we meditate on this clear revelation, the more it rebukes our pride, our claims to self-sufficiency. It is those who deny this revelation, preferring to think of God autonomously, who seek dominance over their Creator. Nor is clear revelation opposed to grace. Rather, it is itself a gift of grace, and it sets forth consistently the message that we have nothing and are nothing, except for God’s grace” (Doctrine of God, 206).

Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God begins by describing “God, the Covenant Lord.” The Old Testament in fact is extraordinarily clear that God Himself stresses that He is in charge, that he is jealous of His own authority, and He actively works to assert it.

What follows is thick with Scripture references, but thanks to Reftagger, it should be easy just to mouse-over and see what these references say about God and the authority which Roman Catholics wrongly assert ended up in the hands of the popes:

Who is this God that we seek to know? Scripture describes Him in many ways, and it is dangerous to seize on any of them as being more basic or more important than others. In seeking to summarize Scripture’s teachings, however, we can certainly do worse than to use the concept of divine “lordship” as our point of departure.

“Lord”(Yahweh in Hebrew) is the name by which God identified himself at the beginning of His covenant with Israel (Exodus 3:13-15; 6:1-8; 20:1f.). It is the name (Kurios in Greek) that has been given to Jesus Christ as head of the New Covenant, as head of His redeemed body (John 8:58; Acts 2:36; Romans 14:9). The fundamental confession of faith of both testaments confess God—Christ—as Lord (Deuteronomy 6:4ff; Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 12:3; Philippians 2:11). God performs His mighty acts “that you may know that I am the Lord” (cf. Exodus 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29f.; 10:2; 14:4, 18; 16:12; Isaiah 49:23, 26; 60:16); Psalms 83:18, 91:14; Isaiah 43:3, 52:6; Jeremiah 16:21, 33:2, Amos 5:8).

At critical points in redemptive history, God announces “I am the Lord, I am he” (Isaiah 41:3, 43:10-13, 25, 44:6, 48:12; cf. Isaiah 26:4-8, 46:3f.; Deuteronomy 32:39f, 43; Psalm 135:13; Hosea 12:4-9, 13:4ff, Malachi 3:6, which allude to Exodus 3:13-15). In such passages, not only “Lord” but also the emphasis on the verb “to be” recall the name-revelation of Exodus 3:14. Jesus also frequently alludes to the “I am” in presenting His own character and office (John 4:6, 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19, 18:5ff; cf. John 6:48, 8:12, 9:5, 10:7, 14; 11:25, 12:46, 15:1, 5). One of the most remarkable testimonies to Jesus’ deity is the way in which He and His disciples identified Him with Yahweh of Exodus 3—a name so closely associated with God that at one point the Jews became afraid even to pronounce it.

To summarize those points, throughout redemptive history, God seeks to identify himself to men as Lord and to teach and to demonstrate to them the meaning of that concept. “God is Lord”—that is the message of the Old Testament; Jesus Christ is Lord”—that is the message of the New (Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 11-12).

“As controller and authority, God is “absolute,” that is, His power and wisdom are beyond any possibility of successful challenge,” Frame says. When a Roman Catholic says “God the Father passed His authority on to Jesus (cf. Matthew 28:18), Who passed it on to the apostles (cf. Luke 10:16 and Matthew 28:19), who passed it on to their successors,” what is he truly saying?

The Nature and Character of God and “Apostolic Succession”

God the Father passed His authority on to Jesus (cf. Matthew 28:18), Who passed it on to the apostles (cf. Luke 10:16 and Matthew 28:19), who passed it on to their successors.

That’s the shorthand view that a fairly knowledgeable (and formerly Reformed) Roman Catholic cited to me on a discussion board. But is the God of the universe, the “Covenant Lord,” our “jealous God” One who would wind up giving “His” authority to someone like Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI?

Calvin famously began his work, Institutes of the Christian Religion , with these words:

Nearly all the wisdom we posses, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves (1.1.1). … It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and the descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy—this pride is innate in all of us—unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity. Moreover, we are not thus convinced if we look merely to ourselves and not also to the Lord, who is the sole standard by which this judgment must be measured … So it happens in estimating our spiritual goods. As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly, and fancy ourselves all but demigods … As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty (1.1.2).

Just as a personal note, I have handwritten in the margin of my copy of Institutes, “This is the main problem I see with the RCC.” The Roman Catholic Church does not truly consider its own state in comparison with God’s majesty. Oh, to be sure, they say plenty of good things about God.

Others have written about Aquinas and his “Platonism/Plotininianism/Dionysianism (the notion that there is a sort of chain of being in the universe on which God is at the top and we at the bottom and we climb it by grace and cooperation with grace).” Without going too deeply into this topic, we see that our old friend Pseudo-Dionysius (and his NeoPlatonism) made it into Aquinas’s theology in a big way. Pseudo-Dionysius is one of those works of fiction that was viewed as authentic during the Medieval era, and which subsequently was adopted virtually wholesale into Roman dogma. And there was no shortage of popes who waxed at length about how wonderfully close to God that they were.

More properly, the Reformers, following a Scriptural investigation of God, came to understand the absolute gulf between God and man.

Just to illustrate this, let’s look at a simple mental exercise. On one side of an equation, you have one. On the other side, you have infinity.

One / Infinity

That’s a pretty big gulf.

Then consider how you might, on the numerical side, come closer to “infinity”.

One / Infinity
Two / Infinity
Three / Infinity
Ten / Infinity
One Hundred / Infinity
One Thousand / Infinity
One Million / Infinity

In this “great chain of ratios,” do you ever, on the left hand side, come closer to reaching the limits of the right hand side? No, you can’t. This is a “category” error. And so is the “great chain of being” theology that posits God not as “wholly other,” but merely at the top of some kind of “great chain of being”.

The Roman Catholic Faith, with its emphasis on “the Church” as “the Ongoing Incarnation of Christ,” has succumbed to the error of those who tried to build the Tower of Babel. They said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:2-4). What a tragedy.

Here’s a selection from the works of A.A. Hodge that I have, for years, used as my personal signature on discussion boards:

And the sphere of a creature's knowledge, be it that of an infant, or of a man, or of a philosopher, or of a prophet, or of saint or archangel in heaven, will float as a point of light athwart the bosom of that God who is the infinite Abyss for ever; From A.A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology, God-His Nature And Relation to the Universe, pg 16.

In the first place in the Roman Catholic chain of succession, a misunderstanding of God and His nature are fundamental to its whole system of authority.

Cullmann on Kerygma, Gospel, Tradition and Apostolic Authority

And beginning with Moses an all prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And their eyes were opened and they knew him. They said to each other, Did not our hearts burn within us . . . while he opened to us the scriptures? (Luke 24:27, 31, 32).

Thus begins Cullmann’s account of “The Tradition,” from which I’ve cited several times now, and which, I have heard from someone reliable, is probably the best account of the relationship of “scripture and tradition”. As I work through this, of course, I’ll check Cullmann’s analysis against other writers on the topic, and of course, against the witness of Scripture.

Last time I cited Bryan Cross’s view of succession (in contrast to Sullivan’s). In the recent Catholic Answers thread that bore my name, some of the folks there were a bit saddened that I didn’t stay and answer all their questions. Of course, I answered a number of their questions, but there ended up being more than 400 comments and I just didn’t get to read all of them, much less respond to them. One of the writers there, Pete Holter, a (as I understand it) former Reformed believer, provided this account (somewhat abbreviated):

God the Father passed His authority on to Jesus (cf. Matthew 28:18), Who passed it on to the apostles (cf. Luke 10:16 and Matthew 28:19), who passed it on to their successors.

This “passing on,” in the Roman Catholic account, takes a similar flow as that given in shorthand form by many Roman Catholics. In many of these accounts, indeed, in the official account, the words “authority” and “tradition” and “succession” sort of get muddled together until, in the Roman Catholic mind, there is just one thing: and the Roman Catholic Church and its teachings and Magisterium have the very authority of God on earth. It’s been that way since the muddling, and that’s good enough for us!

I think Cullman’s “The Tradition” admirably isolates those threads – authority and tradition and succession – he defines them well, and he talks about what genuinely gets “handed on” from God, what just sort of gets picked up along the way, and what gets distorted.

My copy of this article is found within Cullmann’s 1956 collection of essays, “The Early Church” (London: SCM Press Ltd). In his own words:

Firstly, I shall try to prove that the New Testament regards the Lord exalted to the right hand of God as the direct author of the tradition of the apostles, because he himself is at work in the apostolic transmission of his words and deeds. Secondly, by examining the conception of the apostolate, I shall attempt to determine the connection between the apostolic tradition and the post-apostolic tradition, and the difference between them. Thirdly, I shall enquire whether this distinction is confirmed by the history of the early Church, and whether, in creating the canon, the Church itself deliberately separated apostolic from ecclesiastical tradition, so as to make the former the norm of the latter (pg. 59)

Over the next couple of posts, I'd like to follow Cullmann's account, bringing in other information as I go. Christ, of course, is the final and perfect Revelation of God. As the writer to the Hebrews begins by saying, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me (John 14:8-11).

But God does not give an unclear view of himself in the Old Testament, and it is this God we see when we see Christ.

Apostolic Succession In Perspective: Review and Introduction

Before I start back into some of the historical processes regarding the Synagogue and teachings and elders, I’d like to stop and take stock of what I’ve written, and put it into the perspective of the overall discussion.

Here’s a key statement from the Keith Mathison piece; which may be found in Bryan Cross’s extended dialogue with Michael Horton:

Of course the inquirer has to determine whether there is a succession of authority from the Apostles to the bishops of the present day, and whether Christ gave to St. Peter and his successors the primacy. But just as our discovery of Christ does not entail that the basis or ground of His authority is our judgment that He is the Son of God, and just as a first century Roman citizen’s discovery of the Apostles would not entail that the basis or ground of their authority is his judgment that they were sent by Christ, so the contemporary inquirer’s discovery of the Catholic Magisterium extending down through the centuries by an unbroken succession from the Apostles to the present day does not entail that the basis or ground of this Magisterium’s authority is the inquirer’s judgment that it is the divinely authorized teaching authority of the Church Christ founded. The reasons by which he grasps its authority are not the ground of its authority, whereas without apostolic succession the only ground for the authority of any confession or pastor is its or his general agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

It is said that “it all comes down to authority,” and this, in many ways, is the focal point of Roman Catholic claims to authority. Let’s take a look at the authority claim that Bryan is making (which I believe to be consonant with what Rome has taught in the past, although, I would say, Rome is in some ways “re-calibrating” this “story” in our lifetimes):

The Inquirer has to determine:

1. Whether there is a succession of authority from the Apostles to the bishops of the present day

2. Whether Christ gave to St. Peter and his successors “the primacy”.

Of course, the answer to both of these is “no”.


There are three things, according to Cross, the authority of which are not dependent on [“not entailed by”] the enquirer’s “discovery” of them:

1. Christ is the son of God

2. The Apostles’ authority during the first century

3. The Catholic Magisterium extending down through the centuries by an unbroken succession from the Apostles to the present day.

He says, “without apostolic succession the only ground for the authority of any confession or pastor is its or his general agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture,” but that is a meaningless philosophical construct that doesn’t matter, because if “apostolic succession” is not historically viable understanding of “church authority,” then it is not, and the “philosophical necessity” posited by Bryan is just simply meaningless.

It’s at point 3 where Protestants can and do and must understand and draw the line that this item #3 was not “from the beginning” – this point #3 was a development that occurred, took place in the second part of the second century in the forges of what Oscar Cullmann called the “post-Apostolic” period, the period of the Apostolic Fathers. The early generations of the church relied on an “oral tradition” to carry through the Apostles’ teaching (δόγματα –see Papias, for example); but this oral tradition failed to stem the tide of [mostly local Roman] heresies in the turbulent capital of the Roman world, which itself was the site of the comings and goings of people and religions from all over the world. Names like Carpocrates and Basilides and Valentinus and probably a dozen others all claimed to draw upon Christianity in some way, according to Everett Ferguson, “Church History Volume 1: From Christ to Pre-Reformation” (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan 2005). It was during this time that “the early church adopted strategies that with varying degrees of effectiveness continued to be employed in subsequent centuries (pg 105).

The orthodox church, the church which relied on the (δόγματα) of the Apostles at first relied upon an “oral tradition” to defend and distinguish itself from this “gnostic soup,” but that attempt could not provide the defense that was needed. And I’ve described it in the past. It is at this point we see the emergence of other defense mechanisms that were more successful, and which seemed to have been solidified in the subsequent centuries:

1. The fixing of a canon of the New Testament as a doctrinal norm

2. The standardization of an office of monarchical bishop, present in some areas of the east but not in the west

3. The notion of “succession”

These “developments” gave shape to the church that Irenaeus knew in the late second century, and which writers like Tertullian and Hippolytus wrote about early in the third century.

The short “short summary” of the result of this process is provided by Francis A. Sullivan, “From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church” (New York: The Newman Press ©2001 by the Society of Jesus [“Jesuits”] of New England). Sullivan says:

While most Catholic scholars agree that the episcopate is the fruit of a post-New Testament development, they maintain that this development was so evidently guided by the Holy Spirit that it must be recognized as corresponding to God’s plan for the structure of his Church (pg 230).

Sullivan is among those theologians who are sort of at the forefront of the “recalibration” that I noted above. Even though this represents a tremendous concession (and the Bryan Crosses of the world resist it with all the wishful thinking they can muster), it is still not going far enough. It is at this point, around these historically-verifiable elements of church history, where Protestants must (and will, I believe) take issue with Roman Catholics: while there is no question that God enabled “the one true church” to survive this period, the resultant “structure” was merely an expedient of the time, crafted by the individuals of the time, and not some sort of divinely-mandated “structure” that God intended for all time. (Here is the point at which to understand the method of God in his response to Paul’s plea: “My grace is sufficient for you.” What worked in the past will be a disaster for the future. Do not rely on “the structure,” God says. “Rely on me.”)

In my posts citing F.F. Bruce and Roger Beckwith on the synagogue structure that was in place during New Testament times (and which I hope to continue to work with), the following statement from Sullivan is evident:

This structure was in development during the New Testament era, but even at the close of that period the Church did not yet have a structure adequate to meet the challenges it would face during the second century. Catholics see no reason to think that the Holy Spirit, who guided the Church during the period of the New Testament, would have ceased to guide it during the development of the basic structure necessary for its long-term survival (230).

And of course, upon this, again, it turns. It is mere assumption that this is some sort of “divinely mandated structure.” In a comment the other day, PeaceByJesus reminded us of the meaninglessness of claims to “unbroken succession” from that time till the Reformation.

The history of this entire period and of course, the leadership structure of Medieval church history, scream mightily that this is the point at which Protestants can and do and should draw the line, and say, “we reject this so-called authority, the rotting fruit of which is evident throughout history, and the supposed cleaning-up of which [at Trent] was merely cosmetic. Roman dogma had permitted a creeping rot to infest itself, and from Trent onward effectively anathematized the Gospel, the kerygma, “the precepts or the teachings (δόγματα) of the Apostles”.


John Calvin went into tremendous detail about much of this in his Institutes. Without having the historical perspective that we have today, Calvin wrote a summary of this process that someone like Francis Sullivan is only now catching up to.

I’ll stop here for now, with a reminder. Viisaus noted in a recent comment, “Or in other words, the Reformers pointed out that it was more important to be successors of apostles in SPIRIT rather than (to claim) to be their successor in FLESH.” I would extend that remark – not only successors of the Apostles in Spirit, but in the very teachings (δόγματα) of the Apostles, which, in our day, can be found only in the Scriptures.

Elders, Teachers, Chairs, and Thrones: “what they knew, and when they knew it” (Part 2)

I’m following up on Part 1 of this post, F.F. Bruce provides some context for the synagogue system in Jesus’s time:

The Temple (no, not you Ken) represented the heart of Jewish religious life while it remained standing, but it could not play the part in the regular religious life of most Jews that it had done in King Josiah’s day, when Jerusalem, where he centralized the national worship, was within manageable distance for everyone in the kingdom of Judah. The Jews of the dispersion in particular could pay only occasional visits to the Temple. The centre of their ordinary religious and community life was the synagogue.

The origins of the synagogue are obscure, but it is reasonable to look for them in the circumstances of the exile and its aftermath. How did the exiled Jews preserve their religious loyalty, to a point where those who ultimately returned from the exile considered ‘the people of the land’ too lax or syncretistic in their practice to merit participation in the rebuilding of the Temple? If in their exile they met together for mutual encouragement, to recite appointed prayers and sing the songs of Zion even in a foreign land, this would constitute a synagogue in embryo at least. The synagogue developed throughout the post-exilic centuries and became an invariable feature of Jewish life not only in the Diaspora but in Palestine and even in Jerusalem itself. There on Sabbaths and festivals services of worship were held in which prayers and praises of the temple services were repeated; but whereas in the Temple these prayers and praises were adjuncts to the sacrifices, in the non-sacrificial liturgy of the synagogue they constituted the indispensable elements.

A synagogue service at this time began with the call to worship and the recitation of the Shema and associated benedictions, together with the Decalogue; it continued with the appointed prayers and benedictions, the reading of the law and the prophets, a ‘word of exhortation’ or exposition, and concluded with a blessing. Though a general pattern could no doubt be discerned in synagogue services throughout the Jewish world, there was considerable variation; Israel Abrahams could speak of ‘the freedom of the synagogue’. But the general sequence of the synagogue service had an importance beyond the confines of Jewish history; it influenced to some extent the order of early Christian worship. Invocation, prayer, thanksgiving, scripture reading, exhortation, blessing have from the beginning been integral to the Christian liturgy, although the central place is given to the distinctively Christian ordinance of the Eucharist.

The synagogues throughout the world brought the knowledge of Israel’s God and Israel’s religion to all the Gentile cities in which there were Jewish communities. ‘From early generations Moses had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues’ (Acts 15:21). The picture given in the Acts of the Apostles, of Paul and his colleagues making for the synagogue in each new city they came to, and using it as their base of operations as long as they permitted, harmonizes perfectly with the picture given by archaeology and literary and epigraphic evidence. Even Athens, which Jewish residents would probably have found less congenial than many Greek cities, had its synagogue, according to Acts 17:17, and evidently some Athenians were sufficiently attracted by Jewish worship to attend it regularly as God-fearers.

Philippi appears to have been an exception: according to the most probable reading of Acts 16:13, Paul and three companions, finding no regular synagogue there, went outside the city on the Sabbath to ‘a place where prayer was habitually offered’ on the riverside according to Jewish custom and ‘sat down and spoke to the women who had come together.’ This seems to mean that, in the absence of a sufficient number of Jewish men (ten of whom must be present before a synagogue congregation can be properly constituted), some women—Jewesses and God-fearers—came together and said the appointed prayers for the Sabbath. Although they could not form a synagogue, they did form the nucleus of the Christian church in Philippi. The quorum for a church was ‘two or three’ (Matt 18:20), much smaller than a Jewish minyan, and so far as the privileges of church membership were concerned, Paul himself laid it down that in Christ there was ‘neither male nor female’, just as there was ‘neither Jew nor Greek, . . . neither slave nor free’ (Gal 3:28).

The narrative of Acts speaks of synagogues also in Damascus, Cyprus, Iconium, Thessalonica, Beroea, Corinth, and Ephesus. (F.F. Bruce, “New Testament History” (New York: Doubleday, © 1969, pg. 143-145).

* * *

“Elders in Every City”
Roger Beckwith, who is an Anglican, in his work, “Elders in Every City: The Origin and Role of the Ordained Ministry” (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press ©2003), noted the use of fuzzy language in the preface to the Ordinal in the Book of Common Prayer to describe the existence of “Bishops, Priests, and Deacons” in the church:

“It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and the ancient Authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church” Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.”

Of this statement, Beckwith says:

This is a very carefully phrased statement which, through loose interpretation, has been misrepresented both by its defenders and by its critics.

For, in the first place, it does not say that this is evident to those “diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient Authors’; in other words, it is evident from Scripture and the Fathers taken together, but not necessarily from one of the two taken singly. If we have difficulty finding the threefold ministry in the New Testament taken by itself, the preface does not say that we should be able to find it there.

In the second place, the preface does not say that “by the Apostles’ decision there have been those Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church” but from the Apostles time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church”; in other words, from the period before the last of the apostles died there have been three orders of ordained ministers; and the last of the apostles, St John, is stated by Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3:3;4) to have lived until the reign of Trajan, who did not become emperor till AD 98. Since the threefold ministry was [evident] when Ignatius of Antioch was writing his letters, about AD 110, it can hardly have arisen later than the beginning Trajan’s reign, in other words, later than the end of the apostolic age. So the preface to the Ordinal is stating the simple truth in saying that it dates from the apostle’s time. But how far the apostles were responsible for the development which took place is left an open question (Beckwith pgs. 9-10)

In discussions between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the question always seems to come down to “the definition of the word ‘Church’”. And in defining the word “Church,” one of the most complicated issues that Protestants face when interacting with Roman Catholics is the notion of “Apostolic Succession.” In fact, to hear the tales of some Roman Catholics, Christ named Peter as Pope, the Apostles as Bishops via a sacrament of “Holy Orders,” and this authority has traveled downstream to us in an unbroken succession, and to challenge the Pope and Bishops is to deny the very authority of Christ.

This is difficult not because Protestants are wrong about it; in my opinion, Protestant rejections of the Roman conceptions of “succession” are quite correct. Rather, this is difficult because there are so many different facets to it, and it requires looking at the issues from many different perspectives in order to understand the complete picture of what happened. As with many things, Rome defines an ancient term or concept in terms of its present-day doctrine. But this is absolutely not the right way to understand how the early church developed.

My hope is to continue to explore all of the many factors that played into this. I think it’s very clear that the gloss that the Roman Catholic Church places on “succession” is really an anachronistic reading – reading its own current doctrines back into the original meanings of some of these words. The gloss that the Called to Communion folks place on this, is beyond anachronism. It is wishful thinking.

Pseudo Dionysius and Other Orthodox Pseudo Saints

Something has come up in the comments that I have neither the time nor the desire to explore in great detail, but I wanted to bring it up here for the sake of anyone who may be following the conversation, and who might be interested in tracking some of these things down.

The anonymous commenter EBW has taken issue with my portrayal of Ananias, which I derived from Darrell Bock, who, in his Commentary on Acts, refers to him as a "non-apostle." Ananias was the individual who, in Acts 9, laid hands on Saul after his Damascus Road experience, "so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit."

Bock said, "It is significant that here a non-apostle is the mediator of the Spirit. The church's ministry is expanding in ways that mean that non-apostles will do important work."

In retelling the story of his conversion, in Acts 22, Paul describes him as "a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there." That's all the scriptural reference we have to him. It should be noted that Luke does not describe him as "one of the seventy."

Nevertheless, the Orthodox church holds that he is "one of the seventy." EBW wants to say "he was sent" to lay hands on Paul, and therefore, he was an "apostle" (supposedly supporting Bellisario's claim that Paul somehow need to "have hands laid upon him to receive apostolic authority"). There is no "early tradition" on Ananias, only "later tradition." I've provided a link to some of that later "tradition":

Later tradition has much to say regarding Ananias. He is represented as one of the "Seventy," and it is possible he may have been a personal disciple of Jesus. He is also described as bishop of Damascus, and reported to have met a violent death, [either a] slain by the sword of Pol, the general of Aretas, according to one authority, or [b] according to another, stoned to death after undergoing torture at the hand of Lucian, prefect of Damascus. His name stands in the Roman and Armenian Martyrologies, and he is commemorated in the Abyssinian Calendar.

It looks like "earlier tradition" was silent, and "later tradition" can't make up its mind. This is a sure recipe for a phony.

There's a reason why I don't want to track down every Orthodox "Saint" who has a feast day.

When Paul preached at Athens, he was not well received. Nevertheless, "a few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus" (Acts 17:34).

In the fifth century, there were some writings that appeared under the name of "Dionysius the Areopagite." These writings were cited as authentic by both Pope Gregory the Great and John of Damascus. Thomas Aquinas quoted large portions of these writings as if they were authentic and passed them along.

Yet he was a fake. He was not the Areopagite from Acts 17, but a 5th or 6th century Neoplatonist. It was only at the time of the Reformation that critical scholarship began to expose this supposed "apostolic father" as a fraud.

Yet the Orthodox Church still reveres him as authentic -- the OCA website says that even though he "piously borrowed an illustrious name, this in no way diminishes the profound theological significance of the works." To be sure, Pseudo-Dionysian characterizations of God [more than Biblical writings about God] still shape Roman Catholic conceptions of God and hierarchy.

We live in a world in which Christianity is locked in a huge number of struggles, and the most important thing it offers is that it is the Truth. Based on this Truth, Christians seek high office. We ask that laws be written, based on Judeo-Christian ethics. We do not need to have non-Christians characterizing Christianity as if it were just one more religion among the cults. It's bad enough that a devout Mormon may be running for President again.

Christianity is "a sure faith." It is based on genuine historical events. Jesus Christ was a real man, who was crucified by Roman authorities who are attested in history. His disciples were eyewitnesses to his life, death, and resurrection. They gave their lives in support of this testimony. Other Christians argue every day that the Biblical account of creation in Genesis coheres with the scientific truth of the creation of the universe. Each day, Christians struggle to bring the Christian account to the world and to the culture in millions of different scenarios.

None of us should be in this struggle for the sake of playing "make-believe." Nothing in Christianity says we need to check our brains at the door. Christianity is "true truth." Nothing about it should come off as false.

On Being Guided In All Truth

Over the last week or so, I've been watching the massive thread on "the Doctrine of the Church" over at Greenbaggins. It started as a simple comment by Lane Keister to the effect that "Confessions of the church carry much more weight than an individual person’s opinion, even if they are not on the same level as Scripture." That comment in turn has been used as a wedge issue by Bryan Cross, and the whole thread has been turned into a circus by various Catholics.

Over the next few posts, I hope to be able to comment on a couple of different aspects of that thread. But following up on a posting about the misuse of 1 Tim 3:15, here's another common Catholic "proof-text" that is also badly misused:

The Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful, as in a temple. In them He prays on their behalf and bears witness to the fact that they are adopted sons. The Church, which the Spirit guides in way of all truth (Cf. Jn. 16:13) and which He unified in communion and in works of ministry, He both equips and directs with hierarchical and charismatic gifts and adorns with His fruits. (from Lumen Gentium, paragraph 4).

Note a couple of things here: First, see that "the Church" is separate from "the hearts of the faithful." Even at Vatican II, "The Church" is significantly "the hierarchy."

But note also that little reference, "cf" which is used with respect to the reference to John 16:13. It's an abbreviation for the Latin word confer, meaning "compare" or "consult". The Roman hierarchy will throw that little reference out there -- it's not given as a firm exegesis for "infallibility," but possibly with the intention that through the process of "mental reservation," some of "the faithful" will begin to use this verse, incorrectly, as a proof-text. And in this thread, that's exactly what happened: John 16:13 was thrown out there as a kind of proof for infallibility of the Magisterium. See this statement from the Catholic Catechism:

The mission of the Magisterium is linked to the definitive nature of the covenant established by God with his people in Christ. It is this Magisterium's task to preserve God's people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. [Emphasis supplied, JB; see the comment from "Tori" below.] Thus, the pastoral duty of the Magisterium is aimed at seeing to it that the People of God abides in the truth that liberates. To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. The exercise of this charism takes several forms...

One form that's not explicitly given in the Catechism, but is nevertheless "out there" (cf) is that this verse is a support for "the Magisterium". See comment #400 by an individual named "Toli":

See Jn. 16:13. What does Christ say the Spirit will do? That text,among others, through good and necessary inference, opens the gate to an infallible magisterium. The continuity that exists is the same, but better.

This is one key reason why I think that Catholic apologetics, from the top level on down, is fundamentally a dishonest exercise.

What we've seen here is a clear, outright example of the Catholic Hermeneutic, as I've discussed, in which a Catholic does not rely on an exegetical process to understand what a verse means, but instead will start with an existing Catholic teaching, and then read that teaching back into the verse. This "method" has notably been defined by, among others, Pope Pius XII in his encyclical, Humani Generis:

“theologians must always return to the sources of divine revelation: for it belongs to them to point out how the doctrine of the living Teaching Authority is to be found either explicitly or implicitly in the Scriptures and in Tradition.”

But what does this verse really say? What does it promise? I've consulted two commentaries on John, both D.A. Carson (1991) and Andreas Kostenberger (2004) for clarification:

The Paraclete will guide you in (Gk. en is the best reading; eis, 'into', as in NIV, is secondary) all truth. If there is a distinction between 'in all truth' and 'into all truth', it is that the latter hints at truth the disciples have not yet in any sense penetrated, while 'in all truth' suggests an exploration of truth already principally disclosed. Jesus himself is the truth (14:6); now the Spirit of truth leads the disciples into all the implications of the truth, the revelation, intrinsically bound up with Jesus Christ. There is no other locus of truth; this is all truth. The notion of 'guidance' (the Gk. verb hodegeo) in all truth has nothing to do with privileged information pertaining to one's choice of vocation or mate, but with understanding God as he has revealed himself, and with obeying that revelation -- as the occurence of this verb in the Psalms makes clear (e.g. Pss 25:4-5; 143:10).

... it makes sense to suppose that the Holy Spirit is unpacking [the significance of Jesus' death/exaltation]. The verb used here and repeated in vv. 14. 15 (anangello, NIV 'tell' in v.13 and 'make known' in vv. 14, 15) suggests an announcement, indeed in this context a revelatory declaration (as its use in 4:25 suggests), but it is a reiterative announcement. These features square best with the view that what is yet to come refers to all that transpires in consequence of the pivotal revelation bound up with Jesus' person, ministry, death, resurrection and exaltation. This includes the Paraclete's own witness to Jesus, his ministry to the world (16:8-11) primarily through the church (15:26, 27), the pattern of life and obedience under the inbreaking kingdom, up to and including the consummation. All of this the Spirit of truth 'announces', yet in making it known he is doing little more than fleshing out the implications of God's triumphant self-disclosure in the person and work of his Son. (Carson, pgs 539-541, emphasis in original.)

Also Kostenberger:

Yet when the "Spirit of truth" comes (see 14:17; 15:26), he will guide (hodego) them in all truth. "Guidance in all truth" (better than "into all truth") entails providing entrance to the revelatory sphere of God's character and ways. In one very important sense, Jesus is the eschatological Word who has explained ["exegeomai", from which we get the word "exegesis"] the Father (1:18). In another sense, however, by salvation-historical necessity is the Spirit who guides his followers in "all" truth. Such divine guidance was already the Psalmist's longing (Ps. 25:4-5; 43:3; 86:11; 143:10). The prphet recounts how God led his people Israel in the wilderness by his Holy Spirit (Isa. 63:14) and predicts God's renewed guidance in the future (Isa. 43:19). Yet as he guides Jesus' followers in all truth, the Spirit will speak only what he hears--his dependence on Jesus enacting the pattern set by Jesus in relation to the Father--and also tell Jesus' followers what is yet to come. The object of revelation is "what is yet to come" subsequent to the giving of the Spirit, which cannot be the passion, but must be events following Pentecost. The emphasis may lie not so much on predictive prophecy but on helping the believing community understand their present situation in light of Jesus' by-then-past revelation of God. This entails both "a more profound penetration into the content of revelation" and "the application of that revelation to the behaviour of the community within the world."

I just wanted to suggest one more thing here. Note the verb "exegeomai," which Kostenberger refers to, John 1:18: "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known..." This process of "making known" is "exegesis," which, used in the Gospel of Luke means "to give a full account" in the sense of "telling the whole story," which is the most probable meaning here, too.

Jesus is very clear, especially in the Gospel of John, that he only speaks what he hears from the Father (See John 3:34-35, 5:19-20, 7:16-18, 8:26-29, 42-43, 12:47-50, 14:10.) The Spirit repeats this pattern (John 16:14-15). If there is a pattern of "succession," it is this "succession in the truth," demonstrated within the Trinity, that is to be followed. This flies in the face of the "Catholic Hermeneutic," which superimposes its own meaning onto Scripture.

The What is more important than the Who

Michael Brown, a minister in the United Reformed Church, critiques Bryan Cross’ Roman Catholic apologetic in “Finding the Bull’s Eye”. (from August of 2008)
http://michaelbrown.squarespace.com/the-latest-post/2008/8/6/finding-the-bulls-eye.html
“Cross accepts Trent’s bulls-eye rather the Reformation’s bulls-eye not because of what it says, but because of who is saying it. Cross says,
“ The very first Christians did not determine which persons were Christ's Apostles by seeing who taught what they themselves thought must have been Christ's gospel. They determined what Christ's gospel was by finding those whom Christ sent, and then listening to their teaching. And the second generation of Christians did not determine which persons were the bishops by determining who believed and taught what they themselves thought was Christ's gospel, but rather by finding those whom the Apostles had authorized and sent, and then listening to their teaching. And the third generation of Christians did the same. That is the way Christ set up the Church.”
But there is a huge problem in Cross’s statement. The apostle Paul said in Galatians 1.8-9: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”
The statements of Cross and the apostle Paul are at odds here. Paul says that if the who preaches a different what, he is to be accursed and not followed, and he includes himself and all his fellow holy apostles in that number. That even an apostle was capable of erring in this way is evidenced in Paul’s confrontation with the apostle Peter over the gospel (Gal 2.11-14). The standard of testing is the what delivered once and for all to the saints (Jude 3).
But Cross disagrees with this. He claims that the standard is always the who, not the what. And the who, for Cross, is Rome. In other words, the church gives birth to the gospel, rather than the gospel giving birth to the church, as the Reformers argued from Scripture. “

Michael Brown is right. Reformed Protestants focus on what Paul, Jude, John and Peter were focused on – the truth; the apostles doctrine. The first church in Jerusalem focused on the apostles' doctrine. (Acts 2:42) Roman Catholics focus on the persons, the bishops, and their successors throughout history. What happened when the successors went to Arianism for a while and Athanasius was "against the world"? Athanasius writing to true believers, said, "they have the places (buildings, churches), but you have the faith."

"I know moreover that not only this thing saddens you, but also the fact that while others have obtained the churches by violence, you are meanwhile cast out from your places. For they hold the places, but you the Apostolic Faith. They are, it is true, in the places, but outside of the true Faith; while you are outside the places indeed, but the Faith, within you. Let us consider whether is the greater, the place or the Faith. Clearly the true Faith." (Athanasius, Festal letter 29)

When the apostle says, in Galatians 1:9 “so now I say again”, he was saying “so now I say again, by writing this verse, . . . “ Here is basic Sola Scriptura teaching. “As we have said before” means both in his oral preaching and in verse 8. The writing is God speaking through the apostles. Paul expects the churches to understand his writings. The writings are all we have from the apostles. They are the what. The whos are exhorted to continue to hold to the what, the truth, to guard the deposit ( 2 Tim. 1:14), to remember the words of the prophets and apostles (2 Peter 3:2, Jude 17); to pay attention to the more sure prophetic word, the Scriptures. ( 2 Peter 1:19-21).

Peter, the great who, according to the Roman Catholic Church, did not focus on the who that would succeed him. Instead before he dies, he knows he is going to die soon ( 2 Peter 1:12-15) and he says that by writing this second letter ( see 2 Peter 3:1), he is diligent while he still alive to remind them in the truth (the what; see 2 Peter 1:12). He says that after he is dead, the elect, the believers in Pontus, Galatia, Cappodocia, Asia, Bithynia, (I Peter 1:1) "will be able to call these things to mind." ( 2 Peter 1:15) It is the writings, the Scriptures that "stir up your sincere mind by way of reminder." ( 3:1)

Peter says nothing about any successors or bishops. He calls himself a fellow-elder. ( I Peter 5:1) If the Roman Catholic doctrines and dogmas of the papacy and apostolic succession were the truth, the great apostle Peter, the one who is allegedly the first Pope, would have said something about that in his writings, if it was so important. As it is, he emphasizes the truth, and the writings that believers will have to read after the apostles die, so that they can keep on holding on to the truth.